AWESOME Week!

This past week was such a good week for us! Not only did we get to go and visit the Big White Church in Helsinki this week, we found 6 new investigators and Anna came to church!!  It was such a good week for us and was really a blessing because this area has been struggling for so long to open up and we are finally finding people that we can teach. The only hard part is that most of them--actually all of the investigators that we found this week--speak English and so I will not really be getting a lot of Finnish practice in.  But I guess I will learn Finnish if the Lord needs me to learn Finnish.  

Sister Egan and I at the Big White Church (The Helsinki Cathedral also known as St. Nicholas' Church because it was built as a tribute to The Grand Duke of Finland,Tsar Nicholas I of Russia.  It was built in 1830 and is one of Helsinki's most popular tourist attractions. :)

I Never Thought I Would Get THAT Close to the Members!

Relief Society Activity

I did however have one of the most embarrassing moments on my mission this week. So in Finland they have this thing where they put little pebbles all over the place to help people not slip. They actually drive me crazy!  Well, keep this in mind.  So we had this relief society party this week and we were supposed to bring our favorite pair of shoes, but we didn't and just went to get to know the relief society better.  Which was quite fun.  They did these funny games like musical chairs where they would yell out a body part, head, nose, shoulder, bottom, foot, etc.  and you would have to go to the nearest person to you and if they said nose you would have to go nose to nose with them.  Haha, I never thought I would get THAT close to members!  Haha but anyway, later they made us take off our shoes, since we didn't have our favorite with us, and put it in a big bag of shoes. They would hold up each person's shoe and we would have to come and get it and tell why it was our favorite.  Well when they help mine up.... upside down... a ton of little pebbles that I didn't know where there fell out.  Oh my word!!!  So embarrassing!  But I gave everyone a big laugh! :)

Baby Blessings

I also got to hold a baby this week!  It was the best.  We had a member, Julie, come with us to a lesson with Hai, but the only way that she could come is if she brought her 1 year old and her 3 year old with her, which was fine.  But when we got there she was trying to hold and take care of both and it was really hard for her. So she asked me to help her and I tried to explain that we weren't allowed to.  But she explained how well behaved the baby is and everything and she really needed help.  So I prayed about it and felt good about it because she had come 30 to 45 minutes just to help us. So I got to hold her baby for the whole lesson!  It was so much fun! Cutest baby ever. :)

Finding A Former Investigator

One of the new investigators that we started teaching was actually a former investigator!  It is the African woman, Ama, that I talked about back in December who had set a baptismal date but then got sick and we were unable to meet with her at all.  Well, we were finally able to get a hold of her again and have started teaching her and are teaching her again this week!  It turns out that she is pregnant with twins, but right now there are some complications and so she has to stay at home all day everyday unless she is getting a check up at the hospital. So she has a lot of time on her hands and so we are able to teach her!  Awesome!  Well, besides the coming to church part. That is a barrier we will have to cross. She isn't allowed to walk very far so hopefully we can work out a ride or something! But It was so good to see her!! 

Teaching a Chinese Investigator in English in Finland :)

Another investigator that we have came from a referral of the less-active Chinese couple, Yan and Lin, that we meet with every week. Their names are Tem and Jiao.  I love them so much!  They are honestly two of my favorite people in the entire world!  Anyway, they have this friend that has only been in Finland for about a year and is really lonely and so they told her about us and about the church and she wanted to learn more.  So we called her and set up a time that she could come to Yan's and we could meet her and talk to her and she could practice her English.  It was a fun experience because Yan and her friend are still learning English. Yan speaks understandable English and is actually pretty good but she still doesn't understand everything so we have to talk super simple and slow.  And her friend knows even less than Yan.  So teaching was kinda fun!  We got to have Yan translate or teach a lot of it in Chinese. So we would tell her to explain about prayer and she would do it in Chinese.  I think that she understood it, and it was better coming from Yan anyway. But this week we have an appointment with her and Yan can't come, so we are going to have to take it really slow.  But it will be good practice for her and her English.  She is so cute! 

ANNA!!!

Sunday, was so good because Anna came to church!!!  It was so great to see her!  We hadn't been able to see her in about a month, but finally a member that she became friends with moved to Espoo from Lohja and  she is able to really help us get her to church and give her a ride!  So that is really good.  We were able to talk about her baptismal date, and she wont be getting baptized in April it looks like, but we are going to set a new date next week because she will be coming to church next week.  It was so funny because she just kept giving me a ton of hugs when she saw us!  It was so good to see her.  I  love her!  

The Lord Provided the Perfect Lesson!

Yan also came to church! That was a really big deal because she is really shy about coming to church without her husband because she doesn't speak very good English. She is in a Finnish class at school though and wants to start learning faster so she wants to come to church every week no matter what so that she can practice her Finnish!!  Yes!  It was also amazing how the Lord provided the perfect lesson for her in Sunday School.  It was all about eternal marriage and the temple, which is something we have been wanting to work with them on. We were able to talk to her after church and she really really REALLY wants to been married in the temple so that she can be with her husband Lin forever.  It is SO cute! So we were able to talk to her about it and she wants to get sealed to him on the 18th of June, the same day as her baptism.  That is her goal and she is going to talk to Lin about it and we are meeting with them tonight to talk about how they can prepare and what they need to do.  We are so excited for them!  

It really has been such a good week and the Lord has blessed us in so many ways.  He really does love each and everyone of us and will truly guide us in our lives if we will trust in him.


Thanks for all of the support! 

Rakkaudella, 

Sister Knapp